The University of Toronto is hosting a data archiving event on 17th December, to try to “save” climate data they believe will be deleted by the new Donald Trump administration.
Guerrilla Archiving Event: Saving Environmental Data from Trump
There is a Call to Action underway coming out of the Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto, and happening at the Faculty of Information.
Two professors are calling on citizens to figure out if they “Care about Trump, data, or the environment?” Volunteersare invited to join in a full day of hackathon activities in preparation for the Trump presidency.
This event collaborates with the Internet Archive’s End of Term 2016 project, which seeks to archive the federal online pages and data that are in danger of disappearing during the Trump administration. This event is focused on preserving information and data from the Environmental Protection Agency, which has programs and data at high risk of being removed from online public access or even deleted. This includes climate change, water, air, toxics programs. This project is urgent because the Trump transition team has identified the EPA and other environmental programs as priorities for the chopping block.
…
SVP and up-to-date information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1828129627464671/ (link is external)
Bring: laptops, power bars, and snacks. Coffee and Pizza provided.
https://technoscienceunit.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/guerrilla-archiving-e… (link is external)
Submitted by Kathleen O’Brien on Mon, 2016-12-12 17:35
Date:
Saturday, December 17, 2016 –
10:00 to 16:00
Location:
Bissell Building, 4th Floor, 140 St. George St. University of Toronto
Read more: https://ischool.utoronto.ca/content/guerrilla-archiving-event-saving-environmental-data-trump
Can anyone recall any climate skeptic, anywhere, ever demanding the deletion of climate data?
Much of the battle between skeptics and climate organisations has been about compelling reluctant climate researchers to release data which they wanted to hide. Skeptics have consistently demanded more access to data, not less.
For example, consider Climategate email 1106338806.txt from Professor Phil Jones, former head of the prestigious UK based Climatic Research Unit.
From: Phil Jones
To: Tom Wigley
Subject: Re: FOIA
Date: Fri Jan 21 15:20:06 2005
Cc: Ben Santer
Tom,
I’ll look at what you’ve said over the weekend re CCSP.
I don’t know the other panel members. I’ve not heard any
more about it since agreeing a week ago.
As for FOIA Sarah isn’t technically employed by UEA and she
will likely be paid by Manchester Metropolitan University.
I wouldn’t worry about the code. If FOIA does ever get
used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well.
Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people,
so I will be hiding behind them. I’ll be passing any
requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a post to
deal with them.
Cheers
Phil
Plenty more where that email came from – lots of discussions in the Climategate archive of legal tricks to avoid Freedom of Information requests, use of UN mandates to avoid national law based FOIA requests, requests to delete emails and files, and what appear to be deliberate attempts to conceal and perhaps even to delete important material.
In January 2010, the UK information office found that the CRU had breached freedom of information laws, but that the statute of limitations on the offence had run out – it was too late to prosecute those responsible.
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The only thing that really matters is that the CHICAGO CUBS WON!!!
Well, if you count the total (popular) runs, Indians won 27 to 26
Mother Nature does not do politics.
Maybe there are backup copies on a server in one of Hillary’s bathrooms?
Seriously, if anything, these ‘scientists’ are probably deleting the data so that we can’t see how it was adjusted.
If Government scientists are NOT backing up their data,aren’t they breach of their work contract? This is just a publicity stunt.
Old people who have lived in the same Northern city their whole lives are the greatest climate resource. I’m one and can tell you there has been no noticeable change in the climate in the past 60 years, alas. Trump is another.
“Old people who have lived in the same Northern city their whole lives are the greatest climate resource. I’m one and can tell you there has been no noticeable change in the climate in the past 60 years, alas. Trump is another.”
Not really. memories can be false, can change over time, are generally unreliable.
The real danger is not what Trump appointees may delete, it is how much raw data, how many emails, and what audit trail of intentional adjustment get deleted by the GISS crowd and others before the new sheriff shows up. Skeptics may have access to hidden information that makes Climategate seem tiny. Here comes the bleachbit as they hide their tracks before leaving town.
I have a feeling the past is going to start warming up and the current decade is going to start cooling down. He who controls the data controls the ammunition for the narrative. There is a justifiable fear on the left that all of the current government climate data keepers are going to get called into a brief meeting with Trump. “You’re fired”
In 2000 James Hanson wrote a summary on the 20th century temperature trend in the US that said the 1930s were hot but the later half of the century showed very little trend, perhaps a slight cooling trend. What a difference dozens of revisions to adjust the data makes. Now the later part of the 20th century in the US shows a steep rise that was non-existent in the 2000 version of the temperature data. The left knows if you don’t have the Al Gore mind set of “its OK to exaggerate data to get people to act” then you aren’t going to buy into the adjustments they’ve made to the temperature data over the last 15 years. Anthony was involved in a review of the temperature data that showed the adjusted measurements showed 50% more temperature rise than the undadjusted measurements. You think that kind of manipulation is going to hold up through a Trump administration? Neither does the left, so they want to preserve their version of the data, version 2.BS.
Steve, I suggest you investigate the difference between a political appointee, and a career civil servant. You can’t just “fire” a non-political federal worker without cause.
No, but one can eliminate that civil service position entirely, and deal with the incumbent that way. The person might have preference in trying to fill another open position in the same department, but a RIF is possible.
Translation : We are going to delete as many files as possible and make it impossible for Trump to uncover our scam
Wouldn’t this be “fake news” as neither Trump nor any other skeptic has ever called for the deletion of raw data. If they are referring to adjusted data – who cares? GK
Wait, Toronto is still in Canada, isn’t it? Is Trump going to be President of Canada, too?
” Is Trump going to be President of Canada, too?”
We can but hope…
They’ll probably build a wall.
It’s actually a wonderful idea. When can we begin the scraping process?
this is just a typical liberals’ ploy to call for all their data to be deleted
Saw that the Energy department was stonewalling on turning over its list of climate beneficiaries too.
My guess is that approach won’t work once Trump’s actually in office.
Assuming they don’t manage to overturn the election somehow. I’ve not forgotten who is still in power.
I hope that archive.org won’t be removing the older versions of this stuff to “make room”. It’s nice to have proof when the past gets chilled…..
Does any honest researcher ever really delete data? Even if it does not support or disprove one’s thesis,it may still contain useful nuggets if applied to another thesis. Keep everything, I say! We never know where the next important breakthrough will come from.
PMK
To be really pessimistic and honest about it. I really expect that there will be all kinds of missing data when the new guys come in, and the old guard already is laying the groundwork for blaming the new guys for deleting it. None of the information that is questionable will make it into the data backup project and there will be so much hand wringing about how they didn’t get it backup up before the nasty new guys deleted it.
And seriously, you could back up all this data in few days tops, this stinks of planned in advance media attack. But we all know how little facts matter in climate change, it is all media campaigns and pr. Backing up this data is simple and quick. And most of it is duplicated over and over through many groups and locations.
Haven’t these guys heard of wayback machine?
Can we get involved in this, and use it to unearth data not available right now?
Maybe its just me, but I expect all professional organisations to already have data archiving processes in place.
It’s just the pot calling the kettle black.
So BEST is not doing a good job, is that it?
Toronto is not part of Canada, even though Torontonians think they ARE Canada.
We need to save Canada from Toronto.
The wayback machine doesn’t seem to do a good job past a few years. What might be useful would be digitizing data tables from older scientific publications. In case anyone is interested, I can chip in some anomaly data, totalling close to 5 megabytes, as a bzipped tarball in unix format. It’s over 41 megabytes uncompressed. I’ve archived data for…
* GISS mid-2007 to present with a few scattered months back to August 2005
* HadCRUT2 December 2005
* HadCRUT3 November 2011 to May 2014
* HadCRUT4 November 2012 to present
* NCEI January 2010 to present
* RSS February 2008 to present
* UAH March 2008 to present
Would WUWT be interested in archiving it?
“Can anyone recall any climate skeptic, anywhere, ever demanding the deletion of climate data?”
That’s not the term they use, but’s it’s the end they want
Here is how they will do it.
Take Gisstemp for example
1. They will mis-characterize Gisstemp as a fraud, when in fact every bit of data and code has been online since we fought to free it up for auditing.
2. Since they cannot point to any single line of code that generates known false answers or a single bit
that fudges the data, they will characterize it as “suspect”
3. Since it largely agrees with every other record, they will finally characterize it as redundant.
Anyway they can they will find a way to end GISSTemp rather than improve it. Contrast this with what happened when we freed the code
Back in 2007 steve mc and others (like me) worked to get the code free, and then the adjustment code of NOAA free.
After the gisstemp code was free, one team of guys at clear climate code created an improved version.
Their fixes went back to GISS
Since running the GISStemp code takes a few minutes, since it hasnt changed much since 2010,
Since it uses NOAA data, and Since GISSTEMP actually just crunches inputs provided by others,
you cant actually Kill it.
That my friend is the whole beautiful point of free and open software.
“Reykjavik” is an especially interesting and exceptional case.
There is no feeding of adjustments into NOAA’s system. You guys need to do basic grunt work to see what data is ingested and where it lives. Then look at the code and how it changes series
Reykjavik is not being adjusted properly, but the reason is not what you guys think.
Go have a meeting with the guys and Iceland and they will explain why Reykjavick is the way it is.
Its not a simple problem. Fortunately, the bad adjustment makes no difference
As for Rutherglen, I test australia with every variant of that site known to man. and run with and without
cases. there’s no difference worth discussing
“The University of Toronto is hosting a data archiving event on 17th December, to try to “save” climate data they believe will be deleted by the new Donald Trump administration”.
Has Justin Trudeau signed a secret deal handing Canadian sovereignty over to the US or is the US planning another invasion after the last official attempt failed in 1812-14 ?
I don’t think either are likely.
Is the University of Toronto planning to hack US government sites to “rescue” allegedly at risk data?
Imagine the wailing, gnashing of teeth and general righteous indignation if a US group announced it was going after Canadian government information.
Hypocrites
I certainly hope they “save”the unadjusted raw data. It might be the last chance.